ANOTHER SHOP QUITS ABINGTON STREET

Another retailer is to leave Northampton's Abington Street - and has blamed councillors' perceived fixation with the delayed Grosvenor Centre development for the decline of his business.

Gift store Pad, situated at the top of the town's main shopping street for seven years, has announced a closing down sale with a view to selling all its stock by the end of the month and becoming internet-based.

Third of shops empty in Peacock Place - click here Owner Phill Jamieson has claimed the long-running negotiations between Northampton Borough Council and owner Legal and General over the expansion of the Grosvenor Centre have led to other retail areas being neglected.

He said: "If you look at the top of what is supposed to be a shopping street, you see the Connexions centre, a few banks, the BBC building...none of them are for shoppers.

"I think what the councillors have been doing is looking forward to a bigger Grosvenor Centre and thinking everything will be OK after that but not managing the portfolio of shops in the rest of the town.

"Consequently, businesses like mine have found we can't continue in the sort of environment that creates." Mr Jamieson's unit will be taken over at the beginning of next month by a Games Workshop-style store called Project Hydra.

Cabinet member for regeneration Richard Church (Lib Dem, Kingsthorpe) said the new Guildhall administration, which took power in May, would try more to help independent shops but he added that he believed emphasising the Grosvenor Centre was no bad thing.

He said: "We are trying to boost the town centre with things like improved street furniture but we would also like to see independent retailers work together and help the town.

"I understand what Mr Jamieson is saying about shops being grouped together but we can't make particular retailers come to the town centre." The council is still in negotiations with Legal and General about the Grosvenor Centre expansion, first mooted six years ago, but new, unpublished plans were seen by councillors at the end of last month.

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